"Here's Patch, and perhaps he can find out for us. How are you, my giddy old sleuth-hound? I may as well tell you that you scored a bull with that bootlace clue."
"Comrades, I'm delighted. You compared the laces?"
"No. You see, Daw had the boots on. But I heard all about it, and I don't doubt that your clue would have worked out to the last bend in the tag on the lace. There's something else, though—" And Jack told him the strange conversation that he had overheard, particularly with reference to the spy that Daw controlled among the ranks of the college boys.
"Interesting, comrade, deeply interesting," said the schoolboy detective, rubbing his chin in the approved Sherlock Holmes manner. "It seems to me that the field is not too large, either. I mean, the boy must be in this house to keep any sort of watch over Faraday here, and as he comes from Victoria, that narrows the field still further. You twig? There are only a limited number of chaps in Salmon's House hailing from Victoria. And we can whittle them down one by one. I'll get a list of them, and we'll eliminate those above suspicion. That will leave under a dozen, I should say, to be watched."
"Patch, you old genius!" Jack Symonds smote him heartily between the shoulders, and the old genius was projected into the fireplace, whence he recovered himself with injured dignity.
"It's only attention to detail, that's all," murmured Septimus deprecatingly. "I picked that up from Dupin—"
"From whom?" demanded Jack.
"Dupin—that's Edgar Allan Poe's detective, and a real snorting detective at that. Ever read any of it?"
"Dunno. Didn't old Edgar write somethin' about the Bells—Bells—Bells, yells, shells, or some rot like that? My giddy sister recites some yards of rubbish to that effect."
"That's the fellow. Any rate, he wrote 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue.'"